Some of The Facts
Electrical Goods are the fastest growing waste stream in the UK, growing by 5% annually. Although 5% doesn’t seem high it is when you consider that this 5% equates to an increase of over 60,000 tonnes per year!
We get through more than 1.2 million tonnes of electrical waste each year in the UK. With over 75% of this waste ending up in landfill sites the lead and other toxins contained in electrical goods can cause soil and waste contamination. This can have very harmful effects on our health, wildlife and the environment in general.
A 2009 study on recycling suggests Britons are the worst in Europe when it comes to recycling electrical equipment. With over 3.3 tonnes of electronic waste being created during the lifetime of every UK citizen isn’t it time you started doing something about yours?
Inside a typical UK home there is on average 2.4 TVs, 1.6 computers, 2.4 games consoles, 3 mobile phones, and 2.2 MP3 players.
105 million phones are thrown away in Europe every year. In Britain alone, 45 million mobile phone users discard about 15 million handsets a year with 77% of Britons owning at least one mobile phone. Mobiles are designed to last around 10 years‚ but we change them around every 18 months‚ adding to current disposal issues. A simple solution is to recycle them, however, of these discarded handsets, only about 2 per cent are recycled, with the remainder going to landfill dumps or left to gather dust in drawers.
The United Nations Environmental Programme report released in 2010 estimates that globally, e-waste is growing at a rate of about 40 million tonnes per year as consumers, in both developed and developing nations, buy new gadgets and discard their old ones.
An inkjet cartridge takes 450 years to biodegrade and in the UK alone we use an estimated 60 million cartridges each year. Only about 10% are recycled with 54 million cartridges thrown away each year which end up in landfill sites or are incinerated
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